I was finally alone, The part where I got paid was cool, but other than that it just made my head hurt worse.

I plan to funnel all my newly acquired cash directly into a new gun, all things said and done my big skele was heavy, large, and dense. Human skele lacked these traits, the physical side of the creatures I raised remained the same as far as I could tell because large skele definitely shouldn't weigh as much or be as strong as it is. So it'd have enough weight to stand its ground in melee, so the only problem was that I sucked at it.

Should I name them? There are gonna be more eventually so I can't keep this up forever.

"Eh, why not? I bequeath you the name John."

I said pointing at the corner of the room, where the human skeleton stood.

As for the other, Bandit. My newest aspiration was fulfilled so I had a few options. I could go buy a gun for John, or I could go hang with Isiah. One of these options was clearly superior so I took off my holster and headed out the back door.

--------------------

With my presence announced by bells, I strolled in. In a rare occurrence, he was already downstairs, stocking a shelf.

"Yoo."

"Yooo."

He tossed a key toward me.

"I'll be there soon!"

"Mmm."

I walked past the counter, he'd keep things locked if he wasn't there, obsessively. Never asked why.

He used the downstairs area past the shop for storage, and for "Other purposes", he lived on the upper floor, don't know why the stairs led directly to a door, but that is where it led.

Just past the counter where he kept the register was a staircase in a hallway to the right.

I reached the top of the stairs and unlocked the door. Past it leads directly to one of the strangest things any living human could ever witness.

Originally this upper area had a master and a guest bedroom, a bathroom that connected to the master bedroom, and an office of some kind. He tore down all the walls beside the bathroom. It was spacious open and chocked full of everything.

He added a small kitchen, he had 2 couches directly across and facing one another, the one furthest from the stairway doubled as a bed, and end tables flanked both of them. A coffee table betwixt the couches was covered in books and junk of all sorts. In the upper left corner, 2 bookshelves were overflowing with various literary works.

He used wooden boxes to store all his random stuff, they were stacked in the upper right corner corner each about 6 inches tall and wide. Labels ensured he knew what was in each one. Each one he cobbled together by hand.

And he made them at a workbench in the bottom right corner, littered with tools and nails, all the things you'd need to make what he wanted.

Overall, this place was a total fucking mess, and it became even worse when Isiah emerged from the door.

"Did you bring it?"

"mmhm."

I reached my hand into my pocket and retrieved a Crimson Vial.

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He strode up and gingerly took the vial from my hand. Whilst downstairs was mostly used for storage it was also used for one more thing. A basement door near the back would take you down to where he created inebriating beverages. He briskly descended the stairs and disappeared.

Typically getting your hand on a crimson vial was hard because it could be reduced down. Once it was about 90% reduced it was both, inedible, and would simply kill you if you drank it like how it's normally supposed to be used, the most dangerous thing about the Crimson vial is how it reacted with your stomach acid.

Most of the ingredients in the potion were meant to help alleviate the part where it blows up your stomach and you get melted through from the inside out. All the stuff we got rid of helped stabilize the mixture and keep it nice and safe for consumption, but it also held back its healing ability and the pleasure you experience, reducing it greatly increased its healing and the pleasure by 9 fold.

Since you couldn't drink it anymore you would typically inject it directly into a vein, it was easy to overdose on the stuff and it was incredibly addictive. It was easy to make too.

All you needed to do was keep it under a low flame for 3 hours and it was done, typically you would use a Bunsen burner of some sort. Isiah being a known brewer and tinkerer, couldn't buy them, because the chances of him doing something dumb with them were 100%.

Those who could was heavily restricted. I wasn't able to get them until a few days ago because I had no realistic use for them. The only place they could be used normally was at the clinic where anything Sunny couldn't treat such as blindness, hearing loss, etc, with her normal supplies she'd use a Vial to treat. And since she was the only person who sold them, and the only person who used them often, it was pretty much impossible to get your hands on them if she wasn't willing to sell to you.

Since we had the ability to get them Isiah got to do something he'd always wanted to do, try to make a drink with it. Would this probably end badly, yes, was that gonna stop him, no.

I headed downstairs, locking the door behind me cause he'd get pissy if I didn't, and started towards the basement. Wooden boxes overflowed in a massive mess of junk and charms, but I was well attuned to navigating this hell so I had no particular issue. Soon I arrived at an open basement door and descended.

Whoever owned this home before the descent was clearly one of those people who was fearful of the apocalypse and dedicated their lives to preparing for it. Funnily enough, they were right, didn't save them though.

Where there should've been a basement, there was a massive underground bunker, now converted into a large brewery, filled with oak casks smothered in labels, his memory wasn't particularly good, and as such he used them for tracking what was in it, the estimated alcohol percentage, and how long it's been there, and the type of beverage. most of the barrels were filled with aging whiskey.

He was busy washing off potatoes in one of those big ol sinks people used to associate with restaurants. He kept refrigeration and all the distilling equipment down here, a gas stove was heating a pot of water. Of course, his first attempt would start with vodka. Typically every 3 days he'd make vodka in mass.

His store was more of a cover-up for his hidden alcohol factory he kept downstairs since most people didn't particularly enjoy life nor care to live it, drugs were heavily regulated since most folks never hold back when they get any, Isiah got around it by simply keeping it under the table. Some might say that it's morally wrong to let people drink themselves to death, but it's more of a mercy really: A small moment of escape from their dull empty lives.

He started chopping up the potatoes into 8 chunks each.

"How do you plan to add it."

"Well, I'm gonna add it after I distill it otherwise it might get broken down."

"Why are you trying this anyway, from a fundamental standpoint this shouldn't work."

"All the people who made advances before us were either totally insane or incredibly stupid. This is the heart of innovation. If it works I'm hoping to get the pleasurable effects of the Crimson whilst making it much more bearable to drink. Unlike a dose of Pheonix Blood, I want to make it lighter rather than stronger. Whilst Vodka is my base it's not what I want it to taste like, I'd love to experiment with aging as well."

"But it's vodka, it doesn't taste like much in the 1st place, it's just gonna get overpowered by the taste of the Crimson. Even if you don't really want to have it taste like vodka it seems like a bad base."

He started boiling the potatoes.

"Maybe, but we'll just have to see. If it doesn't work this time I can always try again. Whilst this might not work I can always try different drinks, and if that fails I can make some Pheonix Blood and try that. I'm fairly certain that'll just kill someone but it might work, you never know. If Vodka fails me than I might try to make wine with it, I've never made wine but I've always been interested. But before that, I'd like to try to make Whiskey with it"

I sat and watched as my dear friend continued spewing out words without really thinking about them anymore, laying his thoughts bare for me to comment on, and that's what I did till night.

I didn't feel like going home so me and him smoked, and drank a little.

Till we both fell asleep across from one another back upstairs.